Dollars, doctors give MLB unique chance to revolutionize testing

Baseball's ongoing Steroid Era is mainly a byproduct of greed. Out-of-control player salaries have coincided perfectly with the distorted physiques and statistics that symbolize the era. A grotesque surge of cash created a huge incentive for players to cut corners while simultaneously funding an army of enablers, from steroid pushers to union officials and agents.

But while player salaries don't seem to be shrinking, that's not necessarily a bad thing for people who want to clean up the game.

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Here's why: Baseball can identify the same financial forces motivating players to cheat and harness those forces to create the world's most effective anti-doping program. Like an aircraft carrier dodging an iceberg, baseball has been slow to change course, but has some serious firepower close at hand.

First, let's quit denying that money is at the root of this issue. It stands to reason that as the average salary ballooned by about 700% in the two decades following 1985, players faced new pressures. The stakes were so much higher; adding five miles per hour to a fastball or overcoming tendonitis quickly was worth a fortune.

Baseball needs to develop better oversight to counterbalance these pressures. The wealthy sport has an opportunity to do something much more radical than just increasing the bans and testing, and requiring notifications of players' whereabouts at all times so drug-testing agencies can find an athlete at short notice.

In addition to crime and punishment, baseball should get proactive and progressive by incentivizing clean sport. Why not create a deferred-compensation mechanism whereby players can put part of their monstrous salaries in a fund until five years down the line? By contributing a certain amount of their contract ($250,000 a year, say) players will wear a special emblem on their uniforms signifying a dope-free certification.

If a player in the program fails a drug test he would forfeit his entire contribution. Forfeited money from players in the program who tested positive would go toward the research budget of the United States Anti-Doping Agency. If the player remains clean for the duration of the contract, he gets his money back, save for any interest accrued, which would also go toward USADA research.

The program could go even further. Players would also submit to a testing regimen that goes far beyond the one outlined in collective bargaining agreement. An independent drug-testing group would draw players' blood and perform the HGH test that some of baseball's most powerful people like to scoff at. The players' blood would be stored for the duration of their deposit, so that lab technicians can test old samples as new technology develops.

Some say that players would never agree to put aside so much of their salaries, but there's a payoff here - at a time when every successful player is viewed with suspicion, this program would give clean players a chance to escape the taint. If a player remains clean for the duration, he wins a priceless measure of validation in the eyes of the public.

Several professional cycling teams have taken similar measures, establishing internal drug-testing programs and making their beefed-up testing regimens part of their team's marketing.

"If a significant number of baseball players would elect to be subjected to two random drug tests during the offseason, this would most certainly improve the effectiveness of baseball's anti-doping program," said BALCO founder Victor Conte. "It would certainly increase the confidence of the fans that these players who have stepped up and agreed to be tested randomly during the offseason are drug-free."

Conte, who served jail time for his role in the BALCO scandal, believes players can do all their steroid use in the offseason.

"The bottom line is that no drug testing program can be considered effective unless a significant number of the athletes involved are randomly tested during the offseason."

If baseball is worried about what the drug scandals are doing to its image, its budget hasn't reflected much anxiety. The league's $3 million contribution to the Partnership for Clean Competition in the month after the Mitchell Report's release was just 1/2,000th of MLB's reported $6 billion in revenue.

Maybe baseball officials have a hard time imagining that doping will affect the game's bottom line. Indeed, fans seem to love home runs, and ballpark revenues are soaring. But give it time - and take another look at cycling, a canary in the coal mine of doping. Finally disgusted after a series of doping scandals that were perennially described as the final straw, corporate partners started backing out of Lance Armstrong's sport. Team sponsor T-Mobile bailed, and the century-old Championship of Zurich race was cancelled. When German television broadcasters temporarily refused to televise the Tour de France, real panic set in.

That may not happen to baseball next year, or even in five years, but the A-Rod story should serve as a warning that baseball needs to get serious - once a few more stories of injection-site buttock abscesses hit the stands, corporations will be less inclined to link their brand to MLB. Whether it means pulling television spots or logos on outfield walls, sponsors will withdraw.

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Meanwhile, fans are looking for someone to believe in. The league is constrained by its union contracts, but it can give corporate sponsors and broadcast partners an opportunity to recoup their investments if a doping scandal erupts - both the league and its underwriters should make such promises part of their advertising campaigns. In the year 2009, what corporation doesn't want to demonstrate it has a commitment to fairness?

Former Senator George Mitchell, as wealthy as he is distinguished, didn't spend much of his 2007 report exploring the corrupting influence of money.

Many of the reforms Mitchell instituted were original; establishing a Department of Investigations in the commissioner's office could turn out to be a little more hardnosed than anything the World Anti-Doping Agency could think up. But Mitchell missed a unique opportunity. The easy cash in baseball makes possible the kind of progressive anti-doping efforts that track and field and swimming can only dream of.

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Until that happens, there are still a lot more skeletons to shake out of baseball's closets. As long as the minimum wage for a major leaguer is $390,000, at least a few players are going to be tempted to pay about a hundredth of that for a season's supply of human growth hormone.